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Xbox boss Phil Spencer has apologised for the launch state of its latest big first-party release, Redfall, and claimed that developer Arkane Austin will work on improvements for the game.
The first major Xbox exclusive from Bethesda launched this week with a number of technical issues and has generally been reviewed poorly, garnering aggregate scores of 62 (Xbox Series X/S) and 58 (PC) on Metacritic. “And we didn’t do a good job early on in engaging Arkane Austin to really help them understand what it meant to be part of Xbox and part of first-party, and use some of our internal resources to help them move along that journey even faster. We left them to work on the game… they’re a very talented team – I love that team, and I still do, and I will totally bet on them to do another great game.
“But when [Xbox Game Studios head] Matt Booty [Zenimax president] Jamie Leder sit down, I think we can engage earlier with our different studios. And I do think there’s a difference when we come in when the creative is already set on a game – and that’s not washing our hands, every game we ship from our teams is an Xbox game, so we take full responsibility for it”.
Spencer said he believes the platform holder “did a better job” with Bethesda’s other 2023 release, the upcoming sci-fi RPG Starfield, in terms of assisting development, because the game was earlier in production when Xbox acquired it.
“We should’ve been there for [Redfall co-creative director] Harvey [Smith] and the team earlier – I think that’s on us,” he continued. “And then through the process, it’s an Unreal [Engine] game: we have a bunch of studios that have done some really great work on Unreal over the years, and I think we were too late to help in that when they had certain issues”.
At the time of publishing, the co-op shooter has user scores of just 2.6 and 1.9 out of ten.
Addressing Redfall’s disappointing reception in a new interview with Kinda Funny Games, Microsoft‘s head of gaming claimed the platform holder did not expect such a negative reception to the game, citing internal mock reviews which allegedly suggested it could have received much higher scores.